"Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. In short, he was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.
One day a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two traveled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.
But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would not feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird’s ability to fly.
And she felt alone.
And she thought: ‘I’m going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again.’
The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.
She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: ‘Now you have everything you could possibly want.’ However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.
One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her thinking about him. But she did not remember his cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds.
If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.
Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. ‘Why have you come?’ she asked Death. ‘So that you can fly once more with him across the sky,’ Death replied. ‘If you allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again."
I read this story in Paulo Coelho's book 'Eleven Minutes' which is based on the life of a prostitute and I later learned is inspired by a true story. Some of my friends found the book intensely based on Sexuality but what they didn't realize is that the author's prime concern is to make us realize that Love can happen to someone even at the most unexpected times in our lives and sellers of body also have a heart and soul. And when I first read the above written story Maria writes in her diary..it filled me with immense hope and a smile on my face. But I returned to it a few days back and it kept me thinking..
The most amazing thing about this bird story is that somewhere within us we all are like the woman who are soo filled with fear when we actually meet 'the special one' in our lives that we end up entrapping them into our insecurities and forget the real meaning of love. And Love becomes nothing more than abstract meaningless emotions that makes one act in the most obnoxious manner? Is it soo difficult to love someone unconditionally? And why even when we have the perfect family and the greatest friends in the world, the search for 'the soul-mate' never ends.
More importantly, in today's world where everyone is so driven by ambitions and self-interest..love is still an obsession although the perfect relationship seems unattainable. And are there really answers to questions we end up asking ourselves when two people who seemed soo 'made for each other' drift apart into strangers? And even when they are 'still together' after years the pattern is always the same. The initial 'high' of being 'in love' and all the lovey-dovey coodling, messaging, thinking about each other all the time..where does it disappear after 2-3 years of being together? Has it really become soo difficult to love someone for what they really are? How does somebody with whom once one hour seemed like a second suddenly becomes so insignificant that finding an hour to accomodate them in your busy schedule becomes a huge obligation? When priorities change and people grow up, what really happens to promises of 'Not anything can ever come between us'? How does circumstances or other people and sometimes we ourselves become instrumental in destroying something thats a comfortingly beautiful part of our lives? And understanding begins to share an inversely proportional relationship when it comes to those we are closest to and echoes in the 'taken for granted' thought constantly..
Still, the favorite bed-time tales for children remain the fairy-tales and myths of heroes and immortaity and eternal love. Although when you think of it, Paris n Helen Romeo n Juliet, Tristan n Isolde, Laila n Majnu, Rama n Sita, Radha n Krishna.. who really did live in conjugal bliss in the mortal world. Can there really be a happily ever after?
No comments:
Post a Comment